Learning through tragedy

Kittitas County suffered a tragedy last night -- one of our law enforcement officers died in the line of duty, and another was airlifted to Harborview in critical condition. It's been reported that this officer is now doing okay in Seattle. My thoughts and prayers are with the officers families, and their fellow team members.

Hearing about this incident put me right back in my classroom in 2013, and in my office with students in our room with glass windows just six weeks ago.....I remember in 2013 getting the lock down code and panicking just a little bit -- I was stuck in my box of a portable with my noisiest class. I knew there was no way to keep them silent, however as more details became available, it became evident that it wasn't a life threatening lock down situation.

Six weeks ago I was staying late at work to keep our room open for studying purposes, something that is routine during the busiest times of the quarter. There were about nine students working on projects, and another faculty working in his office. How I managed to keep my cool I'll never know because I had a couple of people contact me about things before we got official word from Central about what was going on.

One of my best friends called me when she heard of what was going on, and I knew what she was going to ask, so instead of answering with "Hi," I simply said, "Yes, I'm at work with students. We're fine." "Okay, bye" was her response because she knew how important it was for me to not be on the phone at that point.

I ended up herding my college students into the kitchen because it's not easily visible from the door to the room. Even with them being college students I had to have the "this is real" talk with them. As it became more and more real with calls moving around campus, I had to urge my students to think of this as a learning opportunity (it's a teacher thing). Reminding them how real this kind of situation is for school campuses broke my heart, but at the same time I needed them to understand that they were going to be the ones in my shoes at some point -- I needed my students to know they would be facing the same scared faces I was looking into. I needed them to understand that they, at some point, would experience a lockdown while teaching.

These emergencies, these tragedies, are things not "practiced" during a teacher's undergraduate years. These are the kinds of things that teachers learn to handle while in the field. Unless they've experienced them as a student themselves, teachers are told what to do, but have no practice in doing it. I stress to my students frequently that, "no, you will not always have to write 25-page lesson plans. And, no, you will not know about x-y-z when you walk away from Central and have your first job. You will learn about that while you're in your classroom, and I encourage you to ask your mentors and fellow teachers about things."

While my experience at Central turned out to be a false alarm this time, I know that it won't be every time. Just like last night was not a false alarm -- it is very real for our community, and especially for the families effected. Remember that law enforcement didn't "sign up" to get hurt, they choose to put their lives on the line every day to protect ordinary people like you and me. Thank you law enforcement.